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Contributions To Pion Decay From Lorentz Violation In The Weak Sector, Brett David Altschul
Contributions To Pion Decay From Lorentz Violation In The Weak Sector, Brett David Altschul
Faculty Publications
Lorentz violation in the weak sector would affect the β-decay lifetimes of pions. The decay amplitude may be rendered anisotropic, but only an isotropic violation of boost invariance can affect the net lifetime in the center-of-mass frame. However, since the rest frames of the pions that produce the NuMI neutrino beam at Fermilab vary with the rotation of the Earth, it is possible to constrain anisotropic Lorentz violation using prior analyses of sidereal variations in the event rate at the MINOS near detector. The resulting bounds on weak-sector Lorentz violation are at the 10−4 level, a substantial improvement over …
Neutrino Beam Constraints On Flavor-Diagonal Lorentz Violation, Brett David Altschul
Neutrino Beam Constraints On Flavor-Diagonal Lorentz Violation, Brett David Altschul
Faculty Publications
Breaking of isotropy and Lorentz boost invariance in the dynamics of second-generation leptons would lead to direction-dependent changes in the lifetimes of charged pions. This would make the intensity of a neutrino beam produced via pion decay a function of the beam orientation. The experimental signature of this phenomenon—sidereal variations in the event rate at a downstream neutrino detector—has already been studied, in searches for Lorentz-violating neutrino oscillations. Existing analyses of MINOS near detector data can be used to constrain the flavor-diagonal Lorentz violation coefficients affecting muon neutrino speeds at roughly the 10−5 level.